Steff Gaulter, Al Jazeera's meteorologist, explains what made the Caribbean nation of Haiti so susceptible to such a devastating earthquake.
She says the problems are all due to where the Caribbean plate is situated.
Haiti sits on a faultline in the earth's crust called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault.
At 4:53 pm local time, the Caribbean Plate slipped against the North America plate, causing a massive tremor of 7.0 magnitude.
That was quickly followed by giant aftershocks - at least 28 of them so far.
It's the worst earthquake to hit the island in more than 200 years.
The capital Port-au-Prince is only 15km from the epicentre of the quake. More than a million people live there, and it has been almost completely devastated according to witnesses.
The impact on the surface was apparently made much more intense, because the movement between the two plates happened only 10km below the surface.
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